Angaarey:

The Nizami Press
of Lucknow had no idea that a book that was going to be published by them would
change the course of Urdu literature for times to come. Angaarey was published in December 1932. The four young
contributors for this book were – Rashid Jahan, Ahmed Ali, Sajjad Zaheer and
Mahmud Zafar. This collection of short stories was banned in 1933 by the
government of the United Provinces. Reason: the writers had critiqued the
social and moral conventions of the time and rejected them. The book laid the
basis for the establishment of the Indian Progressive Writers’ Association in
London in November, 1934 and which later matured into Progressive Writers’
Association in 1936. Known as Anjuman
Tarraqi Pasand Mussanafin in Urdu and Akhil
Bharatiya Pragatisheel Lekhak Sangh in Hindi, they were united in their
vision of using writing as a means to attack class and gender discrimination.

In modern Urdu
literature, Angaarey was the first ferocious attack on society[i].
Aziz Ahmed writes - “It was a declaration of war by the youth of the middle
class against the prevailing social, political and religious institutions.”[ii]Angaarey defied all the traditional
norms of the society. Exposed to the Western school of thought, the writers of
this book were from the middle class or upper middle class families. “They
located themselves within the matrix of conflicting worldviews which included
the attempt to usher in egalitarianism, liberalism and individualism against
the rising tide of fascism. The vision of a classless and oppression less
society, free from religious and social dogmas, gender and class oppression and
political subjugation is what fired their writings.”[iii] The writing style and the themes were inspired
by writings of DH Lawrence, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and a few Marxist
writings. In this collection the themes that have been dealt with are varied
and can find echoes even today. Rashid Jahan’s Dilli ki Sair looked at the oppression of women as did
Mahmudzafar’s Jawaan Mardi. Jahan’s
second story – Parde ke Peeche looked
at how a woman was controlled by the codes of the society set down by a
patriarchal system. Ahmed Ali’s Mahavato
ki Raat as well as Sajjad Zaheer’s Phir
Ye Hungama and Neend Nahi Aati look at a sense of loss that the characters
feel. The hypocrisy of religion was critiqued in the stories Badal Nahi Aate by Ahmed Ali and Jannat ki Basharat by Sajjad Zaheer.
Another story by Sajjad Zaheer titled Dulari looked at the discrimination on
the basis of one’s class and gender.

Ahmed Ali wrote: “...We
were filled with a zeal to change the social order and right the wrongs done to
man by man… we dreamed of winning for Urdu and the regional languages the same
respect and for the Indian people the same dignity which other civilized languages
and societies enjoyed.”[iv]

The public
reaction to the book was that of an outrage. Medinah, published from Bijnor, wrote in its issue of 13 February
1933:

“We could not find
in them anything intellectually modern except immorality, evil character and
wickedness. To mock at the creator of the world, to ridicule religious beliefs
and to make indecent jokes are the main characteristics of this bundle of
filth. There is no regard for the greatness and majesty of God nor any respect
for the sanctity and honour of prophets, nor any respect for human dignity.
Instead one finds a bold and shameless display of every kind of foul language...”[v]

There were also
voices which came in support of the book. Akhtar Hussain Raipuri, a reputed
scholar and critic published his fifteen page long review of the book, praising
Angarey in the journal Urdu which was edited by Maulvi Abdul
Haq. Professor Mohammad Mujib who taught at Jamia Millia Islamia wrote in Jamia monthly –

“Angarey is ‘angare’, glowing coals – and
not merely stories- in the true sense! …Their purpose is to impact our senses
in a very unique way- to burn and demolish much that exists in our society.
…Stark images of poverty, helplessness, vulnerability and illiteracy present in
Muslim society coexist with this. There is also a clear protest against the
tyranny of the empowered classes. Our social values and predilections must not
obsess us to the extent that we begin to perceive difference of opinion as
disrespect of these values. The
arrogance that sees criticism as humiliation, differences as enmity, and the
informal expression of thought as impertinence is the strongest enemy of
sincerity and faith…”[vi]

On March 15, 1933
the book was banned by the Government of the United Provinces under section
295A of the Indian Penal Code. Only five copies remained of the book. Two of
them were sent to London while three of them were kept with Keeper of Records
in New Delhi (now the National Archives of India). Such a reaction was not
expected by the young writers of the book and Ahmed Ali wrote-

‘We knew the book
would create a stir, but never dreamt it would bring the house down. We were
condemned at public meetings and private; bourgeois families hurried to
dissociate themselves from us and denied acquaintance with us, especially with
Rashid Jehan and myself, and even Sajjad Zahir's mother (a dear old lady)
accused me of spoiling her son. People read the book behind closed doors and in
bathrooms with relish but denounced us in the open. We were lampooned and
satirized, condemned editorially and in pamphlets . . . Our lives were
threatened, people even lay in wait with daggers to kill us…’[vii]

In response the
writers of the book issued a statement on April 5, 1933 in The Leader, a newspaper published from Allahabad which came out
with an article titled: ‘In Defence of Angare. Shall We Submit to Gagging?’ as
under:

…Coming to the contents of the book
itself, the stories of my friend S. Sajjad Zaheer are concerned chiefly with
the criticism and a satire of the current Moslem conceptions, life and
practices. His attack is directed primarily against the intolerable theological
burden that is imposed from childhood upon the average Moslem in this country-a
burden that leads to a contortion and a cramping of the inquisitive or
speculative mind and the vital vigours of body of both man and woman. Ahmed Ali
essays into the realms of poverty, material, spiritual and physical, especially
the poverty of the Moslem woman, and imagination and admirable boldness breaks
through the veils of convention to expose the stark reality. Rashid Jehan, who
is also a Doctor of Medicine drawing on her practical experience, also portrays
vividly the ghastly plight of the woman behind the purdah. My own single
contribution is an attack on the vanity of man which seeks to find an outlet at
the expense of the weak and defenceless womanhood. Nobody can deny the
truthfulness of those portraits, and anyone who chooses to exert himself can
see that they are not drawn for the sake of literary 'flair', but spring from
an inner indignation against 'this sorry scheme of things.' The authors of this
book do not wish to make any apology for it. They leave it to float or sink of
itself. They are not afraid of the consequences of having launched it. They
only wish to defend 'the right of launching it and all other vessels like it'
... they stand for the right of free criticism and free expression in all
matters of the highest importance to the human race in general and the Indian
people in particular. They have chosen the particular field of Islam, not
because they bear any 'special' malice, but because, being born into that
particular society, they felt themselves better qualified to speak for that
alone. They were more sure of their ground there. Whatever happens to the book
or to the authors, we hope that others will not be discouraged …

It is important to
note that Angaarey was written in
Urdu. Mohammed Hasan’s work on post partition Urdu writing[viii]
explains how ‘Urdu language did not have a religious stamp on its literature.
It is after Partition that the language was looked upon as the language of the
Muslims.’ He continues to explain… ‘If Progressive writing emphasized on the
role of literature as an instrument of social change, the modernist writing
stressed on non-commitment of literature to any ideology. It saw itself as a
vehicle of meaningful identification of the self and its relationship with the
outside world.’ The book was written in Urdu and had a far wider audience in
Urdu as compared with publications in English. Maleiha Malik writing on the
reception of Angarey by the British
observes – “The British colonial authorities could have pointed out to some
support for the publication within the Muslim community if they had wanted to
support critical discussion of Islam and Muslim politics but instead they
preferred to ban the book. Their priority was to re-establish social order
rather than to safeguard the individual freedom of speech of their colonial
subjects.”[ix]

In 1987 the
microfilm of the book was found preserved in the British Museum, London and
Qamar Rais, the then head of the Urdu Department, Delhi University played an
important role in bringing the microfilm to India. The book was published in
1995 in Urdu by Educational Publishing House, Delhi and was edited by Khalid
Alvi. The collection received a phenomenal response and has run into several
editions since the time it was published. It was only in the year 2014 that Angarey was transliterated in Hindi by
Shakeel Siddiqui, published by Sahitya Bhandar, Allahabad. The English translations
were brought out by Rupa Publications, Delhi translated by Vibha S Chauhan and
Khalid Alvi and the Penguin, Delhi edition by Snehal Shingavi.

When translating a text from its original
language, it is necessary to maintain the intended complexity of the story[x]. As
Dr Sukrita Paul Kumar describes, “A translated text is an autonomous aesthetic
entity on the one hand, and on the other, it has to achieve a certain degree of
equivalence with the original.”[xi]
The Hindi text of Angaarey is a
transliteration and it is a sensitive cognition of the target language with all
its cultural baggage therefore a lot of Urdu words which are difficult to
understand have been smoothly replaced by their Hindi equivalents and do not
disrupt the reading of the text whereas it is the translation of the original
in English that demands a lot of attention from the translator. The Rupa
version of the original text has done a commendable job in retaining the
essence of the original- the anger, the frustration with the norms as well as
the creation of the atmosphere that the original created has been brought out
very well. According to UR Ananthamurthy, the translator becomes a
collaborative author, the original text a focal point of reference.

S.P Jain in his
seminal essay on Angaarey in 1988
wrote – “The possibility cannot be ruled out that if published even today in
free India, Angaarey may meet the
fate it did in the year 1932.”[xii]

I conclude my
paper with an unpublished nazm of
Raashid Banaarsii which was written for Urdu as a language but I feel it
extends to the text Angaarey –

Bahut samhje the ham is daur ki
firqa-parastii ko

Zubaan
bhi aaj shaikh-o-barhaman hai ham nahin samjhe

Agar
Urdu pe bhi ilzaam hai baahar see aane ka

To
phir hinduustaan kis ka vatan hai ham nahiin samjhe

Chaman
kaa husn too har rang kee phuuloon see hai Raashid

Koo'ii
bhii phuul kyoon nang-i chaman hai ham nahiin samhje

[I understood a
lot about the prejudices of this age.

Today languages
too are Brahmins and Sheikhs? I don't understand.

If there are
charges against Urdu, that it too is an outsider.

Then whose
homeland is India? I don't understand.

The beauty of the
garden comes from flowers of every colour, Rashid.

Why is any flower
at all a disgrace to the garden? I don’t understand.][xiii]

End Notes:

[i]Mahmud,
Shabana. “Angare and the Founding of the Progressive Writers’ Association.”
Modern Asian Studies. Volume 30, Number 2 (May 1996).

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